'Fanny and Alexander' movie: Ingmar Bergman classic with Bertil Guve as Alexander Ekdahl 'Fanny and Alexander' movie review: Last Ingmar Bergman 'filmic film' Why Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander / Fanny och Alexander bears its appellation is a mystery – one of many in the director's final 'filmic film' – since the first titular character, Fanny (Pernilla Allwin) is at best a third- or fourth-level supporting character. In fact, in the three-hour theatrical version she is not even mentioned by name for nearly an hour into the film. Fanny and Alexander should have been called "Alexander and Fanny," or simply "Alexander," since it most closely follows two years – from 1907 to 1909 – in the life of young, handsome, brown-haired Alexander Ekdahl (Bertil Guve), the original "boy who sees dead people." Better yet, it should have been called "The Ekdahls," for that whole family is central to the film, especially Fanny and Alexander's beautiful blonde mother Emilie,...
- 5/8/2015
- by Dan Schneider
- Alt Film Guide
Two of the 20th Century’s best actresses team up – or square off, to be more precise – in Ingmar Bergman’s Autumn Sonata from 1978. This simple, austere production peels away every layer of a tortured mother/daughter relationship, revealing decades of toxic damage deep within. The film presents an uncomfortably frank appraisal of one family’s stark dysfunction, and the bonds of codependency that ensure a continuing spiral of guilt. And after the wreckage is thoroughly surveyed and assessed, most viewers will recognize scattered bits of their own lives amid the emotional debris.
Here we meet Eva (Liv Ullmann), a mousey preacher’s wife in the rural south of Norway. She spends her quiet days performing musical selections for her husband’s church and dusting the tidy parsonage they call home. One morning Eva composes a letter to her mother Charlotte, a globetrotting concert pianist, inviting her for a visit.
Here we meet Eva (Liv Ullmann), a mousey preacher’s wife in the rural south of Norway. She spends her quiet days performing musical selections for her husband’s church and dusting the tidy parsonage they call home. One morning Eva composes a letter to her mother Charlotte, a globetrotting concert pianist, inviting her for a visit.
- 9/17/2013
- by David Anderson
- IONCINEMA.com
Ewa Fröling in Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander Fanny And Alexander Review Pt. 2 The television version of Fanny and Alexander comes on two discs, each with two of the four episodes (although the series is in five 'Acts'), but only with English subtitles. The second of these discs also offers a good forty-minute documentary called A Bergman Tapestry, featuring interviews with Fanny and Alexander producer Jörn Donner, production manager Katinka Farago, art director Anna Asp, assistant director Peter Schildt, and actors Bertil Guve (who now looks like a balder, thinner Guy Pearce), Ewa Fröling, Pernilla August, and Erland Josephson. The final two discs have Bergman's acclaimed, but rather tedious and uninsightful The Making of Fanny and Alexander. The documentary simply follows scenes showing the filming process, with no real discussion or commentary by either Bergman or any of the participants. Especially in this DVD age, this "Making of" feels...
- 2/5/2011
- by Dan Schneider
- Alt Film Guide
After the tepid response to his star-packed version of Isabel Allende's "The House of the Spirits" a few years back, Swedish director Bille August returns with "Jerusalem", a long, engrossing epic set mostly in his native country late in the 19th century.
Based on Nobel Prize-winning Selma Lagerlof's turn-of-the-century collection of stories, the First Look Pictures release was bypassed by the Academy for a best foreign film nomination, but it's destined to generate respectable business with art house audiences when it opens commercially in March. In a quirk typical of domestic distribution of international cinema, "Jerusalem" arrives when August's newest film, "Smilla's Sense of Snow", should still be in theaters.
Other than small roles played by Max von Sydow and Olympia Dukakis, the large and talented Scandinavian cast of "Jerusalem" is led by newcomers or veterans unfamiliar to domestic audiences. But those who fall under the film's spell will be rewarded with a romantic tragedy that illuminates an obscure bit of history with rich characterizations and moral conflicts.
The main thrust of the narrative concerns the unrealized love of Ingmar (Ulf Friberg), a young farmer whose inheritance is stolen, and his childhood sweetheart Gertrud (Maria Bonnevie), who falls under the spell of a charismatic preacher (Sven-Bertil Taube).
Standing in their way is Ingmar's insensitive sister Karin (Pernilla August), who survives a bad marriage with a drunken thief (he stole the money Ingmar needed to purchase the family property). When Karin leads many of the townspeople in embracing a strict religious movement, she turns the farm into a kind of commune.
Eventually, the religious rebels ignore family ties and make plans to emigrate to the Holy Land. Although he loves Gertrud, Ingmar marries a rich woman and gets the farm back. In one of many ironic developments, it's revealed too late that Gertrud had found the missing inheritance.
The story then follows the fates of Gertrud and Karin when they travel to Palestine and take up with a cult headed by a stern "model" Christian (Dukakis). More tragedy ensues, and the conclusion has a few genuine surprises.
JERUSALEM
First Look Pictures
Writer-director Bille August
Producer Ingrid Dahlberg
Based on the novel by Selma Lagerlof
Director of photography Jorgen Persson
Production designer Anna Asp
Costume designer Ann-Margret Fyregard
Music Stefan Nilsson
Editor Janus Billeskov-Jansen
Color/stereo
Cast:
Ingmar Ulf Friberg
Gertrud Maria Bonnevie
Karin Pernilla August
Tim Reine Brynolfsson
Barbro Lena Endre
Gabriel Jan Mybrand
Hellgum Sven-Bertil Taube
Running time -- 166 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13...
Based on Nobel Prize-winning Selma Lagerlof's turn-of-the-century collection of stories, the First Look Pictures release was bypassed by the Academy for a best foreign film nomination, but it's destined to generate respectable business with art house audiences when it opens commercially in March. In a quirk typical of domestic distribution of international cinema, "Jerusalem" arrives when August's newest film, "Smilla's Sense of Snow", should still be in theaters.
Other than small roles played by Max von Sydow and Olympia Dukakis, the large and talented Scandinavian cast of "Jerusalem" is led by newcomers or veterans unfamiliar to domestic audiences. But those who fall under the film's spell will be rewarded with a romantic tragedy that illuminates an obscure bit of history with rich characterizations and moral conflicts.
The main thrust of the narrative concerns the unrealized love of Ingmar (Ulf Friberg), a young farmer whose inheritance is stolen, and his childhood sweetheart Gertrud (Maria Bonnevie), who falls under the spell of a charismatic preacher (Sven-Bertil Taube).
Standing in their way is Ingmar's insensitive sister Karin (Pernilla August), who survives a bad marriage with a drunken thief (he stole the money Ingmar needed to purchase the family property). When Karin leads many of the townspeople in embracing a strict religious movement, she turns the farm into a kind of commune.
Eventually, the religious rebels ignore family ties and make plans to emigrate to the Holy Land. Although he loves Gertrud, Ingmar marries a rich woman and gets the farm back. In one of many ironic developments, it's revealed too late that Gertrud had found the missing inheritance.
The story then follows the fates of Gertrud and Karin when they travel to Palestine and take up with a cult headed by a stern "model" Christian (Dukakis). More tragedy ensues, and the conclusion has a few genuine surprises.
JERUSALEM
First Look Pictures
Writer-director Bille August
Producer Ingrid Dahlberg
Based on the novel by Selma Lagerlof
Director of photography Jorgen Persson
Production designer Anna Asp
Costume designer Ann-Margret Fyregard
Music Stefan Nilsson
Editor Janus Billeskov-Jansen
Color/stereo
Cast:
Ingmar Ulf Friberg
Gertrud Maria Bonnevie
Karin Pernilla August
Tim Reine Brynolfsson
Barbro Lena Endre
Gabriel Jan Mybrand
Hellgum Sven-Bertil Taube
Running time -- 166 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13...
- 2/13/1997
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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